1. As the owner of highways and mass transit facilities that operate seven days a week (and 24/7/365, in most cases), the State of New York absolutely has both the authority and a public interest in ensuring that the business establishments operating in these properties are as accessible as possible to the general public.
2. CFA’s locations on the NY State Thruway are subject to the terms of their lease with the company that operates the service areas, and also presumably subject to the terms of the master lease between the service plaza operator and the Thruway Authority (acting on behalf of the State of New York).
This is not a religious or civil rights matter at all. It’s a matter of contract law, and without seeing the lease agreement between CFA and the service area operator there’s really no way of knowing what CFA may or may not be forced to do if the State of New York passes this law.
Very few, if any, of the restaurants in the NYS toll road rest stops are open 24-7-365. If that was not true I would not have had to use vending machines on 90 and 87. But that is beside the point. Many I-90 stops are being completely redone. It is entirely possible they want more uniformity of services.
Yes, of course, the various contracts involved are controlling in this case. Is there a 1st amendment issue? Possibly, but in NYS it has a snowball’s chance in hell. If they require being open Sunday through legislation I would hope CFA leaves, and that the rest stops they vacate take a financial hit in reduced revenue. CFAs here in flat land have cars wrapped around the buildings 1.5x and out onto the road nearly every day. Then again, it’s NY.
For the record, it is difficult to argue that the motivation of NYS is the public interest when I-90 tolls were supposed to go away many decades ago. ;-)
NY has a very high weasel factor, so I suspect the legislation was introduced to target CFA, but there is no way at all to support that.
BTW - absolutely love your about page.
Merry Christmas!
Well, well ... what have we here?
Perhaps I was hasty in thinking targeting is not supportable.